February had been a month of tremendous rains. Days of downpour were
succeeded by days of leaden skies and damp, brooding warmth, and then the
clouds opened again and the downpour was renewed. Along the Mother Lode
the rivers ran bank-high and the camps sat in lagoons, the sound of
running water rising from the old flumes and ditches. Down every gully
that cut the foothills came streams, loud-voiced and full of haste as
they rushed under the wooden bridges.

It was a night toward the end of the month, no rain falling now, but the
sky sagging low with a weight of cloud. An eye trained to such obscurity
could have made out the landscape in looming degrees of darkness, masses
rising against levels, the fields a shade lighter than the trees. These
were discernible as huddlings and blots and caverned blacknesses into
which the road dove and was lost. To the left the chaparral rose from the
trail's edge in dense solidity, exhaling rich earth scents and the
aromatic breath of pine and bay. The roadbed was torn to pieces, ruts
knee-high; the stones, washed loose of soil, ringing to the blow of a
moving hoof.

A rider, advancing slowly, had noticed this and with a jerk of his rein,
directed his horse to the oozy grass along the side. Here, noiseless,
man and beast passed, a moving blackness against stationary black,
leaves and branches brushing against them. Neither heeded this; both
were used to rough ways and night traveling and to each every foot of
the road was familiar.

Under a roof of matted branches they drew up; the horse, the reins loose,
stretched its neck, blowing softly from widened nostrils. The man took a
match box from his pocket, struck a light and looked at his watch--it was
close on ten. The flame, breaking out in a red spurt, gilded the limbs of